That the Supreme Court of India has taken note of the reports of a hate speech given by Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of the Allahabad high court, that it has called for its details and particulars from the high court and that the matter is under consideration of the apex court must bring immense relief to those who believe in the Constitution and the ideals it propounds.
A sitting judge commenting on the desirability of the introduction of uniform civil code in the country needs to cause no consternation in anyone’s mind but if he thinks it can be camouflage for spewing venom on a section of the citizens following a particular religion, then it is an issue for all the right-thinking people. And he did not stop at that, but suggested that the “country would function as per the wishes of the majority”. He ‘explained’ that “the law, in fact, works according to the majority... Only what benefits the welfare and happiness of the majority will be accepted.”
It does not require a lecture to be given by a member of one of India’s oldest constitutional courts to decipher the basics of representative democracy. But the learned judge’s utterances, suggestive of the pre-eminence of the majoritarian ideas in the running of the country, are contrary to the basic principles of the Constitution, constitutionalism and every idea they seek to promote. That he aired his narrative of democratic governance at a meeting of an organisation affiliated to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the cantankerous group that advocates violent Hindutva, obviates an interpretation of his intentions.
This country was born into streams of blood spilled from a million innocent human beings among whom were Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Still the Constitution founded this country on the principles of equality and secularism. Every article in the Constitution, starting from the first, is an assurance the people of this country have accepted and given to themselves that they respect the rights of the individual and cannot be subservient to the might of the state. And, too, there is no place for crass majoritarianism.
This country, unlike the honourable judge would believe and want others to believe, does not function as per the wishes of the majority; it runs on the tenets of the Constitution. True, we have representative democracy and those who get the majority sit in legislatures and make laws and run the country; but to interpret it as a way to impose the wishes of the majority on the minority is puerile, uninformed and downright silly. And when it comes from a high court judge, it triggers the suspicion on the way members of the higher judiciary have imbibed the spirit of the Constitution, constitutional morality and constitutional governance. An early intervention and an intense tutorial by the Supreme Court on the basic principles of democratic governance and constitutional values for this judge, and those of his ilk, are an immediate necessity.
